November 04, 2014

I've read a preview of the first issue and watched Joëlle draw pages at her Periscope desk for months, and I think this is going to be a really special book. Joëlle has found the perfect container for her obsessions with bloody mayhem, retro design, vintage advertising and, weirdly, "101 Dalmations"-era Disney animators. You'll see what I mean in January.

March 17, 2014

From 2009 to 2012, I drew “live comics adaptations” of Portland Opera productions -- speed-sketching the major story points as they unfolded onstage, then turning the drawings into little comics. “Opera, Drawn Quickly” collects them all. And now you can download it as a free 79-page ebook.

June 29, 2013

Thanks to Jamie S. Rich for asking me to do this. Been a Mike Allred fan since college (where I once saw him at Kinko's Xeroxing early "Madman" promos), so getting a chance to play around in this universe was a pretty big deal for me personally.

January 12, 2013

Resurrect the most ridiculous character from the 1970s Marvel "Star Wars" comic books -- a seven-foot-tall green rabbit named Jaxxon -- and have him recruit a middle-aged Han Solo for one last heist.

As a joke, my then-co-worker David Stroup and I hammered out a story while driving back from a coffee shop. (This isn't quite as out-of-the-blue as it sounds -- the coffee shop was two blocks away from the offices of Dark Horse Comics, and we'd just been chatting with one of their editors.)

A few weeks later -- also as a joke -- we pitched it as a webcomic to the world's biggest "Star Wars" fan site.

Sixty-odd pages later, "Jaxxon's 11" remains the single geekiest act of my public life, and that is saying something. I wrote the script, packing it with references to the original Marvel "Star Wars" comics (which Ipurchased and, between occasional bouts of wincing, read). David added his own gags and drew the pages with a lunatic attention to detail.

Both David and I went through major career changes in 2004. Even though we have a full story outline, progress is sporadic at best. In 2011, I collected everything we'd done so far as a free 72-page ashcan and gave it away at the Stumptown Comics Fest. Now you can download that ashcan as a free PDF.

If you like this sort of thing, I suspect this is the sort of thing you'll like._____

November 18, 2012

So yeah, Cort Webber and Bobby "Fatboy" Roberts have decided to end their five-day-a-week podcast, on which I've appeared most Fridays for the last six-and-a-half years.

I've definitely had some of the Emotions about the announcement. The show changed my life in lots of big and small ways. I'm really going to miss the Midnight Movies, and the show introduced me to pockets of Portland I never would have encountered otherwise.

But I also understand the boys' logic: Better to go out like "Bloom County" than "Peanuts."

Anyway. We're closing out the show on Friday, Dec. 7 with a big fat live performance at the Bagdad featuring all the regular guests. And I'm holding a going-out-of-business sale.

As a thank-you to listeners, "Cort and Fatboy in: The Secret of the Buried Unicorns" -- the world's first and maybe only podcast tie-in storybook -- is now just THREE LOUSY BUCKS at my online store. Made my money back on these a while ago, and there are fewer than 100 left, so if you ever wanted one, now's the time.

Also new in the store: the remaining print copies of the charming and utterly wrong holiday fable "Santa's Lil' Gimp," my 1994 collaboration with Mr. Gregory P. Dorr. (You can browse the book online at SantasLilGimp.com.)_____